


i will try to fix you

by choi_kimmy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blank Period, Canon Compliant, F/M, Natasha is Suffering, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, So is Steve actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 11:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19149847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choi_kimmy/pseuds/choi_kimmy
Summary: "Having grown up in the Red Room, Natasha has always been so sure of herself. All her trainings and life in general have roughen her edges and toughen every core of her body—unfortunate circumstances and ugly reality couldn’t hurt her, they’veneverhurt. Natasha has always swallowed them down like jagged pills and dealt with the horrible, bitter aftertaste with not more than a frown on her face. She is strong. She is unfazed. She is alone, works best alone—accustomed to the hollowness in her chest, the empty feeling in the pits of her stomach. She is always sure of this,always, until she became an Avenger.Now, she isn’t sure anymore. Not when she wakes with a startling jolt, her breath hitches in shock. Suddenly she is scrambling out of her bed, stumbling onto the floor ungracefully and completely uncharacteristic of her, tears blurring her vision."Or in other words; Natasha is hurting, and she doesn't know how to make the pain stop. Steve is there to comfort her, but he is hurting, too.





	i will try to fix you

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set a few months after the Avengers went to find Thanos in his Garden, after everyone but Steve and Natasha are left in the Avengers Facility. Fair warning that this fic centers around PTSD, and how both of them (but mostly Nat) are trying to cope with it. 
> 
> I must apologise once again if you spot any mistakes, I typed this in the midst of studying for finals because the plotbunny won't leave me. Again, thanks for giving this fic a chance and I hope you'll enjoy it.

* * *

 

Having grown up in the Red Room, Natasha has always been so sure of herself. All her trainings and life in general have roughen her edges and toughen every core of her body—unfortunate circumstances and ugly reality couldn’t hurt her, they’ve _never_ hurt. Natasha has always swallowed them down like jagged pills and dealt with the horrible, bitter aftertaste with not more than a frown on her face. She is strong. She is unfazed. She is alone, works best alone—accustomed to the hollowness in her chest, the empty feeling in the pits of her stomach. She is always sure of this, _always,_ until she became an Avenger.

Now, she isn’t sure anymore. Not when she wakes with a startling jolt, her breath hitches in shock. Suddenly she is scrambling out of her bed, stumbling onto the floor ungracefully and completely uncharacteristic of her, tears blurring her vision. 

Black Widow isn’t supposed to feel. Black Widow is supposed to have an empty shell of a heart; it was what she was trained to be for years, so many painful years. Yet here she is, a few months after Thanos’ demise, struggling to get a hold of herself, struggling to sleep, struggling _not_ to feel.

Natasha leans against her bed, trying to catch a breath. Her heart is racing, her palms are sweaty and she is _shaking._ This isn’t supposed to happen. Black Widow isn’t supposed to feel.

A quick glance at the clock on her bedside table tells her that it’s nearly 3 in the morning; she barely even slept, having gone to bed at 2. She tries to gather her remaining strength and pushes herself from the floor, her mind a hazard, she doesn’t want to think of her dream, but when Natasha closes her eyes, she can see the images vividly in her mind, playing over and over again in a loop—it’s tearing her apart. 

She goes where her legs bring her, and that is to the kitchen. Natasha is an expert of being discreet, her skill of sneaking up on her targets is unrivalled, yet in this small hour, she is making the loudest of noise, her hands knocking into pots and pans as she searches in the dark for a glass. Her hands are shaking, but eventually, she manages to pour herself a glass of water. 

But she doesn’t drink it. Natasha grips against the counter so tightly that her knuckles are turning white. She keeps her head low, her eyes still trying to adjust to the darkness— _this has never been a problem_ , her mind still swirling with hundreds of uninvited thoughts. She doesn’t even hear someone coming in.

“Nat?”

The voice jerks her immediately and she knocks over the glass of water. It shatters on the floor, the sound resonates against the four walls loudly. Lights are switched on, and Natasha sees Steve staring at her worriedly. She sucks in a sharp breath, not knowing what to say, how to react, when those two actions had always come to her naturally without hesitation. It scares her, how she is today, how _vulnerable_ she has become.

Steve is already making his way around the counter, his eyes on the pieces of glass on the floor. He grimaces ever so slightly. “Don’t move, I’ll get the—” 

But she moves, anyway, and she does it on purpose. Natasha steps on the broken fragments, her face impassive even when the pain jolts her completely awake. She limps past him easily, but Steve catches her arm in an instant, halting her movement. “Nat,” He starts again gently, moving to face her. He doesn’t ask her how she is feeling, he just knows. “Your feet.” 

“It’s fine.” She manages a reply, unable to look at him. “I’m fine.”

The grip on her arm tightens, prompting her to look at him. Their eyes meet, and Natasha knows at once that Steve is aware she is lying. That revelation guts her in the stomach again, lying is what she does _best,_ it is part of her identity as a _spy._ She feels her eyes stinging with tears again. _What is wrong with her?_

Steve doesn’t try to dispute her reply. Instead, he simply says, “We need to get the pieces of glass out.”

“Steve,” She shakes her head, then scoffs. “I’ve had bullets and knives gone through my body, this is nothing.”

“It’s still an injury.” Steve replies firmly, then asks. He’s looking at her in that earnest gaze that only Steve Rogers has, and Natasha isn’t sure anymore if she deserves to be looked at that way. “Can you walk to the couch?” 

Natasha knows he isn’t going to back down from this, and in all honesty, she is too tired to argue, so she grunts as a reply and makes her way slowly to the common area. Steve stays behind to clean up the mess in the kitchen, but he is there with her again after a few minutes, a first aid kit in his hands. 

Steve works on tending to her wound quietly and rather expertly. Natasha is right after all, this injury is minor compared to all the ones she’d gotten over the years. By the time he is done, she’d calmed down, her face void of any emotions, of the vulnerability she’d just unintentionally showed him minutes ago.

“Can’t sleep?” Natasha finds her voice eventually, her gaze on Steve keeping the first aid kit away.It’s a question of courtesy, she already knows that like her, Steve hasn’t been able to sleep properly ever since the snap, and nothing has improved since then, especially not after Thor had beheaded Thanos. All hope and wishful thinking disappeared into thin air after that day, after knowing that they cannot undo what has happened, cannot right what Thanos did wrong. They cannot undo their first _failure,_ the one that costed so much lives, caused so much pain and agony _._

The once lively Avengers facility, filled always with so many people, so many equipments roaring with life, became a sort of ghost town to inhibit in. One by one, everyone left without looking back. Everyone but Natasha and Steve.

She knows Steve is suffering, too. Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, she’d taken walks down the corridors and she’d heard him in his sleep. Many times, she’d lingered outside of his door, wondering if she should wake him up, if she should comfort him. She’d end up blinking back tears and backing away. That’s when Natasha knows she isn’t as strong as she was before. She doesn’t know herself, now. How could she think of helping him if she can’t even fix herself first?

“No.” Steve replies with a shake of his head, the sorrow in his voice evident. He looks at her and Natasha sees the pain in his eyes. She sees familiarity in the expression he is bearing; it reminds her too much of her own. “Every time I close my eyes, I—“ He lets his sentence trail off, not wanting to finish it, but Natasha nods, anyway. 

“Me too.” She says with a sigh. “I dream about it all the time.”

Steve settles himself on the seat beside her. There’s a long pause before he speaks again. “I wonder if it’ll ever go away.”

Natasha brings her knees towards her, resting her chin on them. She could choose to lie, just to comfort him, but Natasha doesn’t think he would buy that, so she asks, “Do you want the truth?” She doesn’t wait for his reply. “It’ll always be there.”

Natasha speaks from the years of experience dealing with the aftermath of the Red Room, of what they did to her; all the manipulation, all the lies. What she did _for_ them, for the KGB, what she was trained _to_ do. She’d given that away when she joined S.H.I.E.L.D, naively thinking that it could atone for her wrongdoings. The false pretence that the red in her ledger, all her nightmares, the trauma from her childhood would all fade away in time eventually. They don’t.

Steve nods, then adds softly. “But that doesn’t mean we have to deal with it alone."

She doesn’t respond to that, but she takes in his words. The past Natasha would have brushed that off and disagreed, having lived her life alone, dealt with all her problems alone, suffered in silence alone. But who she is today isn’t who she was in the past. This job she’d grown to love, the family it has brought her, Natasha knows he’s right. Steve’s words are sincere, and she knows he is worried for her. Ever since everyone left, she’d rebuild the walls surrounding her heart, the walls which she’d torn down when she became an Avenger, when she found a family in them, when she became Steve’s partner and gone through countless of missions with him. She’d opened up to him, to so many people. She’d even tried to love, something that was out of question for Black Widow in the past, but she’d tried it nonetheless. 

Now, she is back to where she first began. She has turned into a recluse, shutting even Steve out of her heart. She is still trying to deal with the aftermath of living in the world she’d failed to save, but she isn’t sure how, and she isn’t letting anyone help her. She couldn’t taste anything when she ate, most of the time her meals went down the drain. She’d spent most of her time shooting at target boards, punching and kicking sandbags, even though none of those things matter anymore. She’d barely spoken to Steve, barely even looked at him. Natasha didn’t want him to see her like this, disorientated, weak and broken, quite unlike the Natasha he knew and had worked with for so many years together. So she’d avoided him. 

“Nat, you’re not alone in this.” She hears him speak again, and this time, there’s a pang in her heart that she feels. It stirs something within her, but not quite that she knows what. “Say something, please.”

She opens her mouth, then closes it again. A sigh leaves her. “I don’t know what to say.” She admits, her voice so soft it comes off as a whisper. “I…I don’t know what to think, what to do.” Natasha chokes down the sob that is coming out of her chest, and forces herself to continue, to say the things she didn’t want to admit out loud. “When I close my eyes, I see…I see everyone disappearing, and I didn’t…couldn’t do anything, couldn’t stop it from happening, couldn’t stop Thanos. I’m not supposed…I’m not supposed to feel this way, but I do and I don’t know how to deal with this pain. Steve—”

It is as though someone had opened a lever in her heart, once she started, she couldn’t stop. Natasha whirls around and meets Steve’s gaze; it’s a mirror of hers, sad, broken, devastation, but Natasha has a feeling they’re for a different reason entirely. “--I don’t know how to fix this. Tell me how to fix this. I want this to stop. I want it to _stop_ hurting.”

Steve is careful when he pulls her into his embrace. He wraps his arms protectively around her, and she is silently sobbing against his chest, her valiant attempts to put a strong front for him crumbles immediately, tears staining his shirt. “It’s not your fault, Nat. It’s not.” He repeats over and over again like a broken record.

They stayed in that position for a long time, even after Natasha had stopped crying. She listens to the steady beating of his heart, focusing only on that, pushing every other thought to the back of her mind. Steve presses his lips against the crown of her head, his arms still tightly wrapped around her. They remain quiet, there is no need for words. 

 

\--

 

The next time Natasha hears Steve _hurting_ in his sleep again, she takes a deep breath and enters his room. She’s quiet this time, standing by his bed as she watches how he is whimpering, writhing in pain. He is having another nightmare, and she can see it. 

This time, she climbs into his bed, her voice a hushed whisper. “Steve, it’s okay, you’re _okay_.” 

He wakes up with a frantic look, his breathing irregular, but when he sees Natasha, hears her soothing mumbles of assurance, he begins to calm down. “Nat?” He calls out, voice hoarse, laced with sadness and pain. “I…it felt so real, I thought—”

“Shh,” Natasha runs her hand up and down his arm to comfort him. “It’s over. It’s all over. Take a deep breath, Steve.”

His heart slows, and Steve closes his eyes. He does what she tells him to, even though his mind is still troubled, unable to rest from all that has happened. Each night when the sun sets and the night looms, Steve is tired, yet he cannot sleep. Even when he does fall into slumber eventually, he’d have nightmares, recurring ones that haven’t left him since the day they returned from the Garden.

“Nat?” He calls out once again, one hand latching onto hers. “Please…please stay.”

Even in the dark, Steve could see her features softening, her eyes the shade of green from how he remembers them to be. He’s seeing some sort of life back in her eyes, and Steve is relieved. For weeks, he’d seen only emptiness in them, an ugly hollow of what used to be full of vigour and comfort. For weeks he’d been worried he’ll lose her too, lose her to this aftermath they’re all still trying to forget.

But Natasha is here now, and she is clenching his hand back. Wordlessly, she curls into his side, her free hand resting on his chest. 

“We will be okay, Steve.” She says so softly that he almost misses it. 

“Yes,” Steve replies, pulling her closer. “yes we will.”

They don’t say anything else, both trying to fall asleep, both trying to hold onto the things they know are constant and everlasting, things that actually matter. Both still trying to heal. In that silence, Steve could almost feel their hearts beat in unison. Their hearts may have broken into irreparable pieces, but maybe, just maybe, in time, they’ll be able to fix each other.

 

* * *

**THE END**

 

**Author's Note:**

> So in Endgame, we see Steve visiting Nat and they had a short chat. I've had this headcanon that before Steve moved out of the facility, he actually stayed longer to watch Nat and made sure she's doing okay. Of course, he has his own demons to deal with, so Nat gets her share of watching him too. As this fic is set in the earlier days of the blank period, it's focused heavily on their state of minds, so I'm really sorry if Nat seemed a bit OOC, but what I gathered from Endgame was that even after 5 years, she was still so upset and frustrated about things, so it must have been really, really hard on her during the earlier days of the blank period. I also didn't mention about Nat eventually deciding to help the children whose parents were dusted during the snap, but in my head, that initiative is one of those things that motivated her to move forward and be strong again, to lead the others basically. 
> 
> God, I miss her so much.
> 
> (If you made it this far even on this end note, thank you. Love yall 3000.)


End file.
